TN preservationists put options on three Highlander Folk School parcels

Sep. 3, 2013

David Currey is chairman of the Tennessee Preservation Trust, which hopes to raise about $1 million through a national campaign to buy the old Highlander Folk School property. / Shelley Mays / File / The Tennessean

David Currey, chairman of the Tennessee Preservation Trust, said the parcels the organization has optioned include the former library where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and others trained and spoke. After putting down an undisclosed amount of money last month, the Nashville-based preservation trust now has until mid-February to come up with the funds to buy each of the three parcels outright.

“This takes it off the market,” Currey said.

He said the organization is working to obtain options on four other parcels.

Parks trained at Highlander a few months before she refused to give up her seat to a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., setting off the bus boycott that gave shape to the modern civil rights movement. Highlander, founded in 1932 and closed by the state of Tennessee in 1961, also was the place where “We Shall Overcome” became a movement anthem.

The land the preservation trust is working to assemble totals 13.5 acres, just a small fraction of the 200 acres where Myles Horton started Highlander, which now is based in New Market, Tenn., and known as Highlander Research and Education Center. The preservation trust also is talking to Highlander’s leadership about licensing the Highlander Folk School name.

The organization hopes to raise about $1 million through a national campaign to buy and possibly renovate the property. It would then turn the site over to another group to operate it, Currey said.